Among patients with metastatic lung cancer there has been a substantial increase in ICU use during terminal hospitalizations, resulting in high cost for the health care system.

"Aggressive medical care at the end of life for patients with cancer has not demonstrated a survival benefit and is associated with worse quality of life for patients,” write the authors of a study published in the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The authors of the study evaluated aggressive care at the end of life in patients with metastatic lung cancer, and concluded that aggressive care at the end of life is poor-quality care.

The study included a total of 412,946 patients identified from the National Inpatient Sample database with stage IV lung cancer who had been terminally hospitalized between 1998 and 2014. The researchers used longitudinal analysis to determine trends in aggressive inpatient care at the end of life and multivariate logistic regression to determine associations with patient and hospital characteristics."